Scott Cantrell

FORT WORTH – Not since the late Liberace has a pianist been as much of a media phenomenon as Lang Lang. The mop-topped Chinese pianist, now 25, has been on television shows and sold truckloads of CDs. He has whipped concert audiences into frenzies.

Cliburn Concerts brought Mr. Lang to Bass Performance Hall on Monday evening for a solo recital. And, sure enough, his ripsnorting account of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, at the recital's end, got a noisy standing ovation.

Subtlety isn't Mr. Lang's forte. With Liszt's chattering and booming octaves sometimes pounded within inches of the Steinway's life, with the simple little tune so pushed and pulled that it was sometimes barely identifiable as such, this was vulgarity in excelsis.

In the Chopin E major Etude, played as an encore, excessive rubato distorted the main tune, and the middle section was crudely banged. It sounded like a parody of Liszt parodying Chopin.

In Liszt's arrangement of Isolde's "Liebestod" from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, every gesture was exquisitely calculated without quite capturing the emotional sweep. In Granados' "Los requiebros" (from Goyescas) Mr. Lang would do well to cultivate more of the easygoing ingenuousness of the composer's own circa 1912 piano-roll recording.

Mr. Lang played five Chinese pieces, which he barely identified from the stage. Ranging from Debussy-meets-early-Scriabin impressionism to a demonic boogie-woogie, they would have been more effective if fewer in number.

The playing was more mature, and more satisfying, in the two pieces on the recital's first half. A gentle, pearly tone pleased the ears in a Mozart B-flat major Sonata (K. 333), as did considerable care with tapering phrases. But Mr. Lang couldn't resist rushing 16th notes, distorting some rhythmic underpinnings.

Schumann's big C major Fantasy isn't an easy piece to bring off, and a more fully convincing account would have knit its contrasts of mood into a more convincing whole. Mr. Lang overdid the middle movement's pompous beginning, then pulled the dreamy middle section too much this way and that. But the sheer control of volume, tone and texture was impressive. Let's hope musical values continue to mature.

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